Eyes to the Ocean -GalexOC-
by TaylaWrites
Summary: A short drabble I found buried in my Google Drive. It's a fluffy, adorable story of my OC Hali Anais, victor of the 67th Hunger Games, and Gale Hawthorne. Set during several important events and the after-effect of Mockingjay.


The first time they meet is the first time he meets a victor who doesn't meet the criteria of being crazy, brooding, an alcoholic, or lovesick. It's a welcome treat after being introduced to Capitol celebrity, Finnick Odair, his lunatic fiancé, and certified psychopath Johanna Mason; and frankly he doesn't care who she is as long as she's some semblance of normal in the mess that their little group has become.

She slides into a seat across from him, next to Finnick, with a loud sigh; dropping her tray in front of her. Gale first notices her long, black, hanging freely down her back; followed closely by pretty eyes the color of ice on a frozen pond. He waits while she greets the other victors warmly, asking Annie how she feels and telling Finnick missed them while in the Capitol. Her familiarity with them tells him she must be District Four as well, as she hardly looks at Johanna and Beetee after a simple hello.

"Gale, this is Hali Anais. Hali, Gale Hawthorne" Finnick finally introduces her with a sly smile. Something tells Gale he's seen him staring at her. "She's a certified killer this one, even Snow is scared of her"

"Scared isn't the word I'd use" Hali says with a smile. "Nice to meet you. You're from district twelve, right? Like Katniss and Peeta?"

"We grew up together" Katniss turns from her conversation with Prim to answer. She looks at Gale before continuing speaking. "I met Hali in the Capitol. She's a Victor from Four."

"From ocean to underground" He feels stupid as he says it. But Finnick and Katniss are done paying attention, and Hali rewards him with a small chuckle.

"It's a shift." She agrees. He hears the joking tilt to her voice as she continues. "Not much of a difference from the coal mines, hm?"

"Just less dust and cleaner outfits" Hali laughs with him. He likes the way she laughs, clear and soft

-.-

She joins him in training a few days after, equipped with a custom weapon Beetee has made for her. It's a small harness attached to her right arm, holding a reel that secures a heavy duty cord and a sinister, hooked, blade and makes it retractable.

"What do you do with that?" Gale asks as she pulls it on, strapping the harness into place around her wrist.

"It's a spear line" Hali answers, showing him the blade. It's small and curved with tiny barbs running around one side. There's a leather wrapped handle to it, enabling short and long ranged combat. "You throw it. And then the cord can be pulled back to reel it in."

She's got good aim with the thing, which as she explains again is a fishing tool in Four that she adapted into her main weapon. Gale figures she won her games with it, as Beetee has been making signature weapons of the Victors for the propos. He's seen Finnick's extendable trident and the durable bow and arrow Katniss was given. Johanna has her ridiculously sharp axe, and now Hali's been giving this spear line. Together they created a strange Victor Quartet of deadly weapons in the hands of probably unstable people. It wouldn't be long before Peeta got a paintbrush and Beetee handed Annie a fishing hook and completed the set. It was probably mean of him to say it, but he didn't care. At least Hali had a seemingly strong enough grip on herself.

-.-

They send him with Hali and Finnick in combat testing, setting them up in a mock stealth mission that requires their hand weapons against automatic guns shooting rubber bullets. Coin and Boggs want him to watch the two of them to see how long it takes them to snap. Finnick panics once when a strike of mock lightning strikes to close to him, but keeps his composure and doesn't make noise. He'd be off guard if it happened in a fight, but overall he's fine. Hali doesn't even blink as she systematically kills every holographic PeaceKeeper in the area. There's even a creative bit where she beheads one with the tightened cord.

Gale is impressed with her for sure. Hali makes a good soldier, and after a few weeks in Thirteen she's lost the translucence in her skin and gained weight, making her even prettier than she'd been when he first met her. Before Hali, none of the Victors he'd met lived up to Katniss in his head. Now he wasn't sure who he'd rather have watching his back.

-.-

"Hey" Hali approaches him on in the cafeteria. The others are nowhere to be seen, having been confined to the hospital wing or their rooms after Johanna had started a fight between herself, Katniss, and Finnick. He supposes Annie won't be joining and Prim is with her mother, leaving him with Hali as she sits across from him.

"Not going to punch another Victor in the face, are you?" Gale asks, glancing around him.

"I would but there doesn't seem to be one around, and you're too pretty to risk messing up your face" She smiles as she digs into the vegetable broth they're serving that night. "Katniss still in the hospital?"

"Yeah" He nods. He'd stopped by to see her earlier that day? But she'd been too busy arguing with Johanna in the next bed over. "You didn't get into the scuffle?"

"I got enough scuffles in my games" She answers. "No need to join them anymore"

She's never mentioned her games before, so he asks quietly. There's a stiffness to her as she answers his question about how she won.

"I smashed my district partner's head in with a rock" She answers. "He killed the little girl from five in front of me, so I killed him. We were the last three"

For a moment he's surprised Beetee didn't give her a rock instead, but immediately feels guilty for his sarcasm. While Finnick, Johanna, and Katniss goad him constantly, Hali is typically goes out of her way to be kind. She doesn't deserve his sarcastic meanness.

-.-

"So. You have a thing for Hali?" Johanna startled him when she sits on his bench in training. Normally she's glued to Katniss as they slowly assemble weapons together, but today she's left Katniss with Finnick and Hali and joined him.

"What's it to you, Seven?" He answers gruffly. She's not Katniss, so she doesn't puff up defensively. But she does give him a dirty look.

"Chill out there, soldier" Johanna scoffs. "I was going to tell you to be careful with her. Hali's one of the most put together out of us, save for the ones in One and Two who like killing, but she's still a Victor. She has demons."

It's hard to imagine Hali being like the others. Especially when comparing her to Katniss and her identity crisis or Annie's disconnect. But Gale knows there's truth in what Johanna says.

"I know you're into her. We've all seen how you look at her, and you're not subtle. It's disgusting" Johanna continues. "I think she's into you too, but your gruff brooding giant thing you do won't get you anywhere"

"I don't brood" He answered defensively.

"Stop chasing after Katniss like a jealous dog and I'll believe that" Her answer is twisted with sarcasm and disgust.

"You're a good friend, Johanna" Gale says.

"Sure I am" she scoffs and walks away.

-.-

Gale sees those demons the first time he admits to himself that he's in love with Hali Anais. It's at Finnick's wedding when she loses it, a panic attack set off by the particularly deep voice of a District Thirteen technician who'd ventured out of the lower levels at the promise of cake. Johanna sends him after her when she flees once the man speaks in her vicinity.

"Manta had a voice like that" The girl tells him as she pushes him toward the door. "Deep and gritty like that. It's hard to hear a voice like your district partner's again. I still don't like hearing little boys talk after mine."

Hali has curled up in the corner of her room when he finds her. She's not crying, or screaming as Katniss does when her memories catch her. She's just sitting there, knees to her chest, staring at the cold concrete of the wall. Gale takes the blanket from her bed and wraps it around her, taking a seat next to her. She's rocking back and forth until he does it, only stopping once the folds of the blanket have curled around her.

He doesn't get to speak. She just leans over and wraps her arms around his torso, burying her head in his shoulder. Gale wraps one arm around her, stroking her hair with the other. He can feel her taking deep breaths, exhaling them into his shirt. Her breathing slows and at some point she ends up completely in his arms, with him holding her quietly in the darkness of her room.

"I'm sorry, Gale. I wish you didn't see that" Finally Hali straightens up, fixing her hair and rubbing her eyes.

"It's alright. I promise." She looks up at him with a smile; her green eyes meeting his own darker ones. It's then, sitting in the dark in an underground bunker, listening to the quiet pace of her breath and hearing his own heartbeat in his ears that he realizes he's in love with her.

-.-

"Gale?" Her voice comes softly from the dark, echoing quietly in the cramped, underground bunker. They're packed in tightly under Tigris's shop, sitting without light as they listen to the woman's footsteps above their head.

"Hey" He greets her as she slides down the wall to sit next to him. Her warmth is welcome in the cold. His must be to her as well, as she immediately presses her exposed skin to his when she's settled. "You should be asleep. You've had a rough day"

She doesn't respond, probably in the midst of deciding what "rough" means. She's watched as they've lost several members of their team today, some of them dead, others missing. No one knows where Finnick and Johanna are, Jackson is trapped somewhere down in the sewers, Castor and the sisters have died. Boggs is laying in a residential square, covered in thick, dark, oil. Somehow it's dwindled down to himself, Cressida, Pollux, Peeta, Katniss, and Hali. Her District Partner, at least that's how he thinks she sees Finnick, was separated from them along with Johanna when part of the sewers caved in behind them. Everyone else is presumed dead.

"I'm used to not sleeping" She answers softly. Her voice doesn't echo this time, too close to a whisper for anyone but him and the wall behind her to hear it. "It happens when you're a Victor. The replay of the arena in your head keeps you up"

Gale is hesitant when he wraps an arm around her shoulders, surprised when she's receptive to it. They sit in the dark together and he tells her stories of District Twelve, the meadow, hunting in the woods, and tiny yellow canaries. She tells him of crashing waves, seashells, and the smell of salt water on the open ocean.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're too pretty to be chasing after Finnick all the time?" Gale whispers to her.

She laughs into his shoulder, the sound muffled. The vibrations running up his skin feels lovely. "No. But I suppose no one's ever told you that you're too handsome to sulk over Katniss"

Her compliment sends warmth climbing up his neck. "Why would I need to be sulking over Katniss when I have you?"

Her eyes find his and watch for a few seconds. "Gale" She says softly, just barely audible.

"I do have you, right?" He drops his arm so that his hand rests on her hip. The answer she gives will decide whether he wants to get out of this final battle alive or not.

"You always have me" Hali sits up quickly, her hand cupping his cheek as she positions herself on her knees at his side.

Her lips are soft and warm as she presses them to his, followed by the gentleness of one hand splayed against his chest and the other holding his face. He digs his fingers into her hair as he returns it, the other holding her hip just as he was before. Unlike his kiss with Katniss, this one is receptive and sweet. She wants it just as much as he does.

-.-

They say goodbye at the train station in the early morning. It's just rolled into a stop, opening the doors for the awaiting passengers to step on. She and Finnick are going back to District Four to rebuild, and he's staying in the Capitol until they decide which district he belongs in. Finnick is morose and subdued, having just gotten word a few days before that his new wife is dying in District Thirteen, after complications from a suicide attempt. Hali is just as quiet, though Gale knows this is as natural for her as it is unnatural for Finnick. He doesn't want her to go, but she needs to. Finnick needs her. Her district will too.

"I'll miss you" She mutters to him as the final passengers slip off the train. The holograph above them switches to read _Now Boarding._

"I'll miss you too" He presses a chaste kiss to her lips. This time she doesn't return it, she merely steps back and away. He understands that she doesn't intend to leave District Four, and he wouldn't expect her to. What they had was meant to be shared deep underground, in places like Thirteen and Tigris's bunker. This is the end.

Gale stands back as Hali leads Finnick into the train, waiting till after it's engine has restarted to pull it from the station before he leaves. He'll be in another District by tomorrow, probably One or Two by the sound of it. Katniss is already back in Twelve with Haymitch, Peeta leaves for it in a few days. He knows Johanna took the first train back to Seven the minute she got out of that last meeting with Coin. Rumor has it she took the other victor, Enobaria, with her.

This is his place. Their place. They've won it and now no one can take it from them.

-.-

Months later Gale is stationed permanently in District Two, named director of security by President Paylor. It's taxing, but he loves the stress of it all. This is his calling and he knows it. He'll likely never go back now that he knows his Mother and siblings are safe there. Rory tells them their house has been rebuilt, and he and Vick have been helping with others. His mother works with Posy in the refugee camp where the others live while their homes are rebuilt. They're happy, so he's happy.

It's through Haymitch that he hears about Hali and Finnick. The old man thought a friendly voice would be best to break the news, Peeta doesn't like him all that much and Katniss is as Hollow and unfriendly as ever, so the old man takes it upon himself to tell Gale that after Annie had died, Hali and Finnick ended up together; same as everyone thought they would. Haymitch tells him it's serious, and Finnick wants to marry her but Hali has said no repeatedly out of respect for Annie. He's pretty certain she'll give in eventually. Katniss and Peeta plan to attend their wedding, as does Johanna, Enobaria, and Beetee. It's bittersweet but he expected it. After all, his work is in Two.

And his heart is in District Four.


End file.
